Welcome to the Boston Metro Journal!

A city may feel static but under closer observation it can reveal itself to be a living organism, and as such it can offer a relationship to flaneur, tourist, and commuter alike.

"Pops' Cup" - Angela M. Counts 2011

In Spring 2011, I began keeping a weekly journal on the City of Boston and surrounding areas. Through this project, I have been able to learn about the city's buried “treasures,” people like Phillis Wheatley the former slave buried in the Granary Burying Ground in downtown Boston, who rose to prominence as a poet in her short but brilliant life. 

"Phyllis" - Angela M. Counts 2011

I was also greatly enriched in by the vibrancy of a city that I experienced through its food, its music, its history, and its natural habitats, as well as by encountering the people here -- citizens, recent immigrants, students and visitors alike.

For more information about The Boston Metro Journal project concept and accompanying photos, please click here, or select "Preface to Boston Metro Journal".

Thanks for viewing and reading! 

L. (Libraries)

Looking out from the W. Van Alan Clark Jr. Library at the SMFA
Photo: Angela M. Counts

The Museum (School) Library

As I close this week -- both this entry and the blog -- I'd like to end sort of where I began...the library. I can't get away from books and the city! Preparing for my final paper for Mexico Art History class, I spent a great deal of time in the W. Van Alan Clark Jr. Library at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. 

Libraries are definitely repository of books as much as they are places for contemplation and art. The following photos are photos I took chronicling the view from and within the library on a nascent, spring day.

Spring day in the W. Van Alan Clark Jr. Library at the SMFA
Photo: Angela M. Counts

The way we see them: W. Van Alan Clark Jr. Library at the SMFA
Photo: Angela M. Counts

Perspective: W. Van Alan Clark Jr. Library at the SMFA
Photo: Angela M. Counts

And last but not least, if you are in Boston and would like to see some of this blog as it appears in the exhibit, Whistling Past the Freedom Trail, the show runs through June 3 at Horticultural Hall, The William Morris Hunt Memorial Library, 300 Massachusetts Avenue.


G. and V. - Lawn Saints and Performance on the MBTA Subway

G. ~ Grottos and Lawn Saints

"Celestial Wreath"

On my way home from an MFA Thesis exhibition at the Tufts Gallery, I briefly got lost down a dark neighborhood street. Out of my right side window, I drove by a celestial vision. A few feet away, I stopped the car abruptly. Thankfully no one was behind me! I'd seen religious lawn ornaments before but none that so beautifully lit up the dark, starless night.

After a bit of research, I discovered that the nighttime vision was most likely St. Anthony holding baby Jesus. For more information check out, "Why St. Anthony Holds the Child Jesus" by Jack Wintz, O.F.M.

Red Line, Alewife

V. ~ Performance Art on the T

The train pulling out that morning from Alewife was vacant, except for a lone traveler and her witness (me). The artist, Veena, prepared for her performance as passengers at the next stop filed in unknowing. Over the course of the outbound journey, passengers came and went, while she transformed before their eyes. The following is a poem inspired by her performance.

"Vacant, Voyage, Vibration"

From Alewife to Andrew's
She sang, waxed and waned
While passengers pulled away
Indian woman, yellow
To the core, applying turmeric
Gently, insanity abounds
Inbound, Outbound
All Around
Can someone help you, ma'am?
Are you sure where you are?

Photo credits and poetry by Angela M. Counts

T. and J. - The Spirit of Trees and Jazz -

"Spirit Tree"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

T...Spirit-Tree – The Boston Public Garden

I took this photograph of a tree in the Boston Public Garden for my girlfriend who is a painter. It was for my girlfriend but like most things, there was an underlying motivation waiting to be revealed. I took the picture of her, the spirit-tree, but she only longed to have me sit a while, to not rush off. She waited patiently while I investigated her with camera, trying futilely to capture her majesty, her ancient story.

She reminded me that we first met in 1991 when for the first time I made a trip to Boston with a fellow intern from the Ford Foundation. We travelled by car from New York City to visit my friend’s Boston cousins and for her family to give me a guided tour of the city. One of our stops was the Boston Public Garden. I remember crossing the Lagoon Bridge, and being the fun-loving young woman that I was, I pretended to climb the bridge and feigned jumping off, while my friend took my picture.

I imagine myself in light blue, high-waisted jeans (the fashion of the time!), big glasses, and a somewhat stylish flattop. I am young in age and definitely in spirit. I know my spirit-tree saw me then and she smiled. But I only noticed her for the first time on a starry New Year’s Eve in 2008. I had recently taken up amateur photography and the visual world had come alive looking through the lens of a camera. In one of the coldest New Year Eve’s on record I ventured out into the public garden and took her picture. She was decked out in snow-lace, and illuminated by colored fireworks. She posed for me again and again, delighted that I noticed her after all of these years.

Mary Lou Williams
Photo: By Permission of Gottleib, William, P (1917-), Photographer

J...Jazz @ Union

Since the 1960s, the story goes, historic Union United Methodist Church in Boston has been producing jazz shows. Longtime members talk of remembering the time that the great Duke Ellington played in the chapel. I can imagine the Duke decked out in white tails and top-hat, playing to a grateful and jubilant audience. These days the jazz concert at Union has been revived by music producer and freelance writer, T. Brooks Shepard, and renamed Jazz @ Union. Most recently the series has honored jazz legend Mary Lou Williams, by presenting concerts that feature one of her jazz compositions, Mass for Peace. I had the honor of writing a poem to commemorate her at the 2010 concert. The following is an excerpt, and the full-length poem can be read at my blog, Creative Living, Creative Writing.

Excerpt from "Tribute to Mary Lou" by Angela Counts © 2010 Commissioned for Jazz @ Union's Women in Jazz - "A Tribute to Mary Lou Williams's Jazz Mass for Peace" ~ United Methodist Church - South End, Boston - February 7, 2010 

Just a 'lil gal but she was jamming with the older men
Her feet tapping the pedal, fingers knowing just when
Feeling the movement and the beat
Always one step ahead of ecstatic feet
This music she knew, from those old slave spirituals to blues
This music she knew, from slave ship to broken shore
From a dream deferred to expressions of evermore
Of freedom, neither black nor white


Jazz from this soil, jazz that changed the world
That’s right, and how couldn’t you adore what she could do with it
These are the days, we remember
The timber and sway, of the music,
Mary Lou’s Mass for Peace

O. and D. - City Walks and Diners

"Mission Hill at Night"
Photo: Angela Counts

"Ornate"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

O...
Ode to walks alone during magic hour
The suns teases and promises to stay,
Makes you wanna linger a while longer on the oranges and the blues.

You don't feel so blue anymore.

Ode to the neighborhood street that nestles
And settles into the city dim
Offers its wares, unawares
Its gas lamps that glow with electricity
Cobble stone walks that don't trip but delight
The doors on brownstones that invite but politely say no
The wrought iron gate, ornate, that shames chain link
And is that art there, the small sphere inviting speculation

Ode to  the city walk, evening magic
Solo, unafraid

© 2011 Angela M. Counts

D... 

"Deluxe"
Photo: Angela M. Counts

In his book, The American Diner, diner historian Michael Karl Witzel in striking photos and text documents how the diner as we know it today started out as a lunch cart in the late 1880s. Sometime in the 1970s many diners that were still standing converted or, more aptly, covered their true origins over with brick. As we now know, the diner by large went the way of the Edsel but unlike the Edsel it is still going strong in many pockets of the country, including metropolitan Boston. One of my favorites is Deluxe Town Diner. On any given Saturday or Sunday, you will find yourself standing in line with a pleasant group of folks -- singles, couples, gay, straight, with kids, without -- talking (and shivering in the winter months). Capitalizing on a captive audience the diner now sells a refillable cup of coffee for waiting customers.  Everyone waits pleasantly, if not a little quietly, this isn't New York after all, knowing that soon they will have a hot plate of flapjacks or sausage and eggs...soy sausage if you prefer. And how about a tossed, green salad with your eggs instead of those potatoes? I've tried it, it's not so bad. 

Photo: w:User:Morven (Wikipedia)